Monday, June 04, 2007

Hurray for the Weather Channel!



I admit it - I love the Weather Channel. It's both calming (except for those weather disaster shows they have at night - *shudder*) and scientific, and useful. I admit it, I am a weather geek.

I also hate and despise Fox "News" as anybody with a brain and a conscience and a fondness for the truth does.

So I am really loving that the Weather Channel is facing down Fox:
“If The Weather Channel isn’t talking about climate change and global warming, who is?” said Kaye Zusmann, the vice president for program strategy and development for the network. “It’s our mandate.”

The network, which had been gearing up for the opening of hurricane season on Friday, sees the engagement with the issues surrounding climate change as important for content and for business.

“We have a point of view, and we think it’s really important to articulate why it’s happening. Secondarily, it’s good business,” said Ms. Wilson, the network president. “Many consumers want to know, ‘What should I do?’ ”

The lightning rod for controversy, so to speak, is Heidi Cullen, the network’s resident climate expert.

In December, she raised the ire of Fox News and others by writing on her weather.com blog that the American Meteorological Society should not give its “seal of approval” to any meteorologist who “can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change.” (There are now more than 1,700 comments on that one post.)

Dr. Cullen, a tiny woman who speaks with conviction, said she believed that people were “finally seeing climate connected to weather,” but that a lot of information still needs to be disseminated. “If you turn on the local forecast, you wouldn’t necessarily know that global warming exists,” she said.

Far from being intimidated by the political backlash, Dr. Cullen and executives at the channel say they have embraced the issue of global warming. Dr. Cullen is host of the weekly show “Forecast Earth,” formerly named “The Climate Code” where she has entertained such guests as former Vice President Al Gore. She also appears on the channel’s other programming with segments on hybrid taxicabs in New York City and the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft.


So THERE all my friends and relatives who think I'm weird for enjoying the Weather Channel - they are RIGHTEOUS! As well as calming and scientific and useful.

And that goes for you too, leather punk Jon Stewart!



Although you are so very hot, young punk Jon Stewart.